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Teachers feel test pressure

Some teachers have always felt pressured to keep up with requirements for instruction and testing, but with furloughs, increased class sizes and fewer classroom aides this year, that feeling has intensified.

Local elementary and middle school students finished up the Iowa Test of Basic Skills this week, just in time for a second round of quarterly assessments to be administered this week. The test data demonstrates where students rank academically, and teachers use it to develop instructional plans that cater to each student's specific needs.

But significant amounts of time must be devoted to testing, and some teachers are wondering if they've got enough time to teach.

"It's hard to keep up with the curriculum pacing guides when you start teaching to the test as soon as school starts," said Alfreda Goldwire, president of the Savannah Federation of Teachers.

Savannah-Chatham schools administered the first battery of tests during the second week of the school year. A typical third-grade class will take seven major tests each year. Quarterly assessments in reading, language arts, math and science are administered four times a year. Each subject test takes one hour and is used to assess needs before for the state benchmark test, called the CRCT, in May. The 10-hour CRCT is administered over five days.

Third-graders also take a writing assessment and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills for five hours over the course of six days.

Sharon Sand, senior director of accountability assessment and reporting for the public school system, said the tests are helping raise achievement.

Savannah-Chatham is a needs improvement district and has made steady academic improvements since the district began monitoring student progress through periodic assessments. The Iowa Test and CRCT compare local achievement to the state and nation, and the quarterly assessments are helping the district zero in on essential instructional needs. Those tests actually should prevent time from being wasted, according to Sand.

"Without them, it's like shooting in the dark," she said.

Because only a portion of the school day is devoted to testing, teachers shouldn't have any problem keeping up with the curriculum that is to be taught during each of the nine-week school terms.

"Kids don't sit down and take a test all day long," Sand said.

All total, a typical third-grader will spend just more than 30 hours in testing. During the entire 36-week school year, 10 weeks are devoted to testing and 26 weeks are devoted solely to instruction.

During the first nine-week term, three weeks involve testing. So third-grade teachers, for example, have six uninterrupted weeks to teach fiction and non-fiction reading skills, narrative and informative writing, multiplication, division, Georgia Habitats and the fundamentals of democracy.

"I think they're shooting themselves in the foot with all this testing," Goldwire said.

The district regularly reviews its testing schedule and outcomes to ensure it is testing children only when it is effective and necessary. Officials have eliminated ITBS testing for grades four, six and seven and stopped using online assessments for grades one, two and seven.

Parent Julie Varland, who led a grassroots campaign for more progressive alternatives to testing last year, said the budgetary furlough days reduced instructional time, although the number of testing days remained the same.

"They have all the same responsibilities but fewer days to instruct students," Varland said. "We're losing some of our best teachers because they're becoming assessment managers more than teachers."